wendy house

Wendy: t-mobile’s colours are almost the same as HMV’s  – pink and black

t-mobile assistant: Magenta

Wendy: Oh (signifying recognition that the assistant’s correction was blunt),  I’m sorry,  is Magenta a technical term for pink?

t-mobile assistant:  There’s been an SQL error entering your details,  I don’t know what SQL is but its not your fault.  

Wendy: Sequal Server? Maybe it needs a t-mobile technical specification,  like magenta instead of pink? 

WES©™:  Wendy Experience Scale*

What is this?

This is a tool for assessing product and services experiences.  The tool uses a questionnaire developed with the help of Excel and 84 pots of tea.  The WES ©™ can be administered to any Wendy that uses a product or service that you want to assess.  The WES ©™ will tell you whether that product or service meets the stringent, to be published, Wendy International Standard of Experiences (WISE).  Unlike assessment tools such as the SUS which focuses merely on usability with Likert scales**,  the WES©™  focusses on product and service relevant experiences including usability with 9 semantic differential scales*** .   The scales tap into the following experiences:

1. Fabulousness
2. Aesthetics – Visuals
3. Fitness for purpose
4. Financial value
5. Aesthetics – Tactility
6. Usability
7. Complexity
8. Engagement
9. Predictability****

 Also known as ‘ FAFFAUCEP’  (pronounced faff-Oh-sep)

The WES ©™ is currently in a Beta release stage and is available for use* by product and service developers on condition that they ask advance permission and provide me with a full report of the product, service, assessment conducted including the results which will be used to build the WISE standards.

 

Administering the WES ©™

Let a common all garden Wendy use your product or service to complete a common task that it was designed to enable.  Provide a unbroken supply of tea during use.  Observe the Wendy complete the task collecting usability style observational data.  When the Wendy has completed the task,  or given up provide her with a copy of the WES©™ and ask her to mark an X on the line between each pair of experience descriptors that indicates her experience on this continuum.  There is a practice item that you should encourage the Wendy to complete then discuss her answer to make sure that she understands how to use the scale.   As the Wendy completes the scale ask her to describe examples that have lead to her reporting this experience.  This information will be extremely useful for either developing marketting materials or deciding what to change to improve the experience.

Below is an example of a WES©™ completed by my marking X’s on each scale item describing my experience of my wireless radio.  You can make your own practice scale that covers some dimension of the Wendys or the product being assessed.  In the example below the practice item asks about whether the Wendy considers the product a worthy conversation piece.

 

Practice by identifying where you are on this scale:

never talk about it

————-X——

tell the whole  world about it

 

Where is the Wireless Radio on these scales?:

Absolutely Fabulous	–X—————–	Crappy
Cover-it-with-a-brown-bag ugly	———–X——–	purrrrrrr-rity
Just what I need	——X————-	Don’t see why I’d want to use it
You’d have to pay ME to use it	———–X——–	Take all my cash, and credit, NOW!
Squeeze, stroke, and lickable	——–X———–	Cooties, don’t touch IT!
Did I brake it or what?	—————-X—	Works a treat
I can use it first time	—-X—————	training-required nightmare
Snore, Snore, Snore	————-X——	Fun, Fun, Fun
Its obvious what it was going to do	—–X————–	it was full of surprises

 

Analysing WES©™ Results:

Allocate the location maked on the line with a weighting number between 1 and 10.  

For even number questions the weightings increase towards the left,  for odd number questions the weightings increase towards the right.   Sum all the weightings.    The total possible score is 90.  Higher scores indicate better Experiences. 

Coding the example provided above looks like this

Fabulousness	–X—————–	9 from right
Aesthetics – Visuals	———–X——–	6 from left
Fitness for purpose	——X————-	6 from right
Financial value	———–X——–	6 from left
Aesthetics – Tactility	——–X———–	5 from right
Usability	—————-X—	8 from left
Complexity	—-X—————	7 from right
Engagement	————-X——	7 from left
Predictability	—–X————–	8 from right

 Total score = 62/90 = 69%

The average of multiple WES©™ scores can be used to provide overall Experience score for the product. 

The  normalisation data to enable comparision across different products and services and  indicate the value of the score relative to a benchmark will be published as part of WISE.  Note that without the normalisation data it is possible that all procucts receive scores in the 80’s (a roof effect) or below 20 (a floor effect).   Our expert, on-site, Wendy (me) recommends that prior to the publication of WISE we should assume that any score under 60 is at best a mediocre product or service and any score under 45 is an experience that should be avoided.

For in depth analysis each item should be verified with the observational measures taking during the use phase and the comments made by the Wendy’s when completing the questionnaire. 

In this example we can clearly see that the tactile aesthetics (score = 5) provided the biggest opportunity for improving Wendy’s experience.  Wendy talked about the radio being a bit too big to put in her pocket,  she liked the bouncy rubber bits but all the little buttons were a bit too small and pointy to enjoy pressing them,  she prefers rubber-buttons (who doesn’t?!) and the industrial-safety feel for portable.  

 

Next Steps

The WES©™ development team haven’t decided whether to gather normalisation data on the vo version, refine the item labels before collecting normalisation data or just chuck the semantic differential format and develop WES©™ (v1) based on a creatively cunning perverison of Kelly’s Repertory Grid technique. 

 

* Use is permitted by prior agreement with the inventor (me,  Wendy!)

** the linguistically pedantic should note that Likert scales tend to use split infinitives such as ’strongly agree’ which can irritate those completing the scale undermining its efficacy in cases where people choose not to select any options that include split infinitives for purely curmudgeonly reasons.  This makes the scale unreliable for responses from educated people from Yorskhire.

*** The semantic differential is based on the assumption that everyone interprests the scales in the same way.  Unfortunately,  this assumption is not true rendering the WES©™ useless to anyone other than Wendy.

**** For some products or services predicatability is not a positive experience quality (e.g. games).  Administrators are advised to either scope the item to refer to the service or product controls. 

while waiting for a train

wendy: a medium sized mocha please

cashier: £2.45

Wendy Hands over the cash and waits

barista:  medium Latte

Wendy:  is that for me?  I ordered a mocha,  are you making a mocha next?

barista: I don’t have an order for a mocha

man in queue behind me:  actually, you ordered a Latte

Wendy:  checks receipt,  it clearly states Mocha £2.45, shows receipt to man in the queue behind me to verify that I remembered correctly, checks cost of Latte (£2.35)

cashier:  she did order a mocha

train pulls into station

Wendy:  I’ll take the Latte, keep the tip 

The Great Western Hotel in Reading has been re-branded to a Malmaison Hotel. This style appears to be referred to as ‘chic boutique’.  Judging by the internal decor boutique chic means purple velvet furnishings,  lashings of pink,  large-swirly-print dark-wallpaper and an angular-geometric floor covering all held together with elevator music and a hint of stale cigarette smoke. 

According to the Malmaison-branded paper-wrappers on the Napkins:  Malmaison. Eats. Drinks. Sleeps. 

This sounded uninspiringly basic 

I tried the eggs benedict,  or rather egg benedict,  just the one egg and half a muffin.  The ‘eats’ were not impressing me,  the ‘drinks’ didn’t include any real ales.  Apart from myself the only other customers in the bar on this Saturday afternoon were a couple of Hotel guests from the romantic together while speaking in Dutch.  After trying the ’sleeps’ while waiting about 15 minutes for any member of the Bar staff to actually come into the bar I  gave-up on the ambition of eating a pudding and walked into the boutique reception area to ask if they could arrange to bring me my bill (US = check). 

It was unisnpiringly basic

However,  all of that said, I do have it on good authority that they have a fabulous suite with an en-suite train-set that is mumzie-impressingly-good.  I may have to get a second, mumzie, opinion on this.  Certainly I can see how a train-set is in keeping with the original,  pre-boutique, Great Western Railway (GWR) branding…

Luckily,  the chic boutique rebranding hasn’t yet spread to the external original architecture that conveys something of the original standing of the GWR.

 

received in an email from a boy sent to a distribution list of mainly boys including the odd non-boy like me: 

we had a Soccer-game and it was great Fun (even 1 Female attended )

can you see any problem here or is refering to a gender-based stereo-type based on predominant current behaviours acceptable?

facilitator:  put your hand up if you’ve been to MacDonalds in the last week.

about 70% of the class raise their hands.  The facilitator points out that desptie many negative associations people still purchase the product.   Under my breath, I mutter that I’ve never been into MacDonalds.    Things start to go downhill.

facilitator:  BMW,  what words do you associate with BMW?

I frantically try to search for a word to cover shafted the failing British car industry.  Hearing other people generate words like ’stylish’, who am I in a room with…  …they go to Macdonalds and think BMW is stylish?  Am I in the wrong place?  I get frustrated with my inability to find one word that covers the true depth of my dislike for BMW

Wendy:  Bastards

Then we move on to consider Coca Cola.  The word ‘Yuck’ comes to mind,  the rest of the class are generating words like ‘red’ and ’sugar’.  I realise that I haven’t knowingly drunk anything produced by that company in the last 2 decades.  The girl stood next to me smiles and talks to me about how addictive and wonderful Coca Cola is.  I toy with the idea of telling her that I find the brand Coca Cola product terminally icky but decide that I should hold off on becoming a fully-fledged curmudgeon for at least another 10 years… …and return her enthusiasm with a smile….